‘To what extent may social networking tools and associated digital technologies assist

in the transformation of current consumer society to a more sustainable, equitable and

creative model in particular through educational and cultural institutions?’

3310182801MA Cultural StudiesGoldsmiths University Of London 2009

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Contents

Introduction pages 3-9

Chapter One: The Situation As It Is pages 10-18

Chapter 2: The Situation As It Might Be pages pages 19-29

Conclusion pages 30-34

Recommendations pages 35-38

Last word pages 39-40

Bibliography page 41-44

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Introduction

Resting no longer on a curriculum or a time-table, education must conform to the facts of human life.1

It might be time to put Marx’s famous quote back on its feet: ‘Social Scientists have transformed the world in various ways; the point, however, is to interpret it.’2

This question is born out of my engagement with these tools and technologies in the

course of my professional life and observation of the inequalities that are rife in our

society and the seeming solution of some that the answer to these injustices is to

provide an educational model, which mimics that of the privileged elite. It is my

proposition that while this might not be wholly without justification and validity the

challenges faced by our society going forward require an engagement with new

technology in such a creative and imaginative way that the educational system in its

numerous institutional forms is not currently providing, especially not an neo-

classical version of education based on the Prussian model. This dissertation

examines the situation as it is, as it could be and makes some recommendations for

the situation going forward.

There has been much positive talk about the potential of web 2.0 to transform society

for the better. For example, Charles Leadbeater’s work through the think thank ‘the

Innovation Unit’. Leadbeater’s book ‘We think’ talks at length about the return of

1 The Absorbent Mind Maria Montessori The Theosophical Publishing House 1964 p11 2 Reassembling the Social An Introduction to Actor- Network-Theory Bruno Latour Oxford University Press 2005 p42

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society to a pre-industrial model of kinship and creative expression through the easy

availability of the distribution channels afforded by such entities as youtube, flickr

and myspace, and the rebirth of a kind of folk culture as the high barriers to entry

necessitated by the vast costs of the recording and media industries are dismantled by

the instantaneous ability of anyone to publish their creative work using web 2.0.

Leadbeater paints a rosy view of the potential of this technology to touch and

transform peoples’ lives in a positive way:

The web’s underlying culture of sharing, decentralisation and democracy makes it an ideal platform to groups to self organise, combining their ideas and know-how to create together games, encyclopaedia, software, social networks, video-sharing sites or entire parallel universes.3

Terravova elaborates on these issues at length in her book ‘Networked Culture’, not

least that we are undergoing a shift from the

long nineteenth century of the industrial society to a new cybernetic age of communication, command and control.4

This is, very succinctly, the socio technical environment that the educator is operating

within in the developed world.

Tim Berners Lee has elaborated on the process, that he initiated, of constructing the

World Wide Web at length in his book ‘Weaving the Web’:

3 We Think Charles Leadbeater Profile 2008 p74 Terranova Network Culture Politic For The Information Age Tiziana Terranova Pluto Press 2004 p11

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The intention was that the Web be used as a personal information system, and a group tool on all scales, from the team of two creating a flyer for he local primary school play to the world population deciding on ecological issues.5

He envisaged the world wide web could be used for educational purposes, especially

collaborative endeavours, which is pertinent given that the thesis of this piece of

writing suggests that educational models which emphasise the role of the teacher as

instructor dispensing knowledge to the empty vessels which are her pupils is no

longer adequate given the complexity of the globalised world that we now live within.

Using Bruno Latour’s quotation as a starting point, if we accept that much of the

mechanism of capitalism is inclined to transformation as a structural necessity, in

what ways may we interpret and interact with these technological forces so that we

can better understand both their potential and indeed draw backs, and educate our

young people appropriately to take an active part in a strengthened democratic

society?

It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to look at the challenges of education in the

majority world and the role that technology must play in this; my goal is to examine

the potential for the reinvigoration of the educational space within one specific setting

in this country bearing in mind the social changes that are taking place, but to co1sider

this setting in light of its interrelation with the world at large in its many dimensions.

If, among many challenges:

5 Weaving The Web The Past, Present and Future of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee with Mark Fischetti Orion Business Books 1999 p175

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Isolation of subject matter from a social context is the chief obstruction in current practice concerning a general training of mind.6

Put succinctly, meaning that if students cannot see purpose in their learning, and,

furthermore, that:

We want the person to write and recall and judge those things which make him an effective competent member of the group in which he is associated with others.7

To be able therefore to take his or her place within civil society through the education which he or she experiences.

We see that the problems facing the education system today are not new: John

Dewey’s book was written at the beginning of the twentieth century but is considered

a major philosophical landmark in progressive educational theory. So to what extent

does the internet in its constant mutations and such technology’s employment within

the educational settings have ramifications for the education of our young people and

how might this impact upon the many issues in education Mr Dewey has so brilliantly

elaborated upon of which I have barely skimmed on save to note his impressive

contribution and perhaps one of the key points.

Terranova writes about the phenomenon of a networked world as she explains that:

The design of the Internet (and its technical protocols) prefigured the constitution of a neo-imperial electronic space, whose main feature is an openness which is also a constitutive tendency to expansion.8

6 Democracy and Education An Introduction the Philosophy of Education John Dewey The Free Press 1916 p67 7 ibid p688 Terranova Network Culture Politic For The Information Age Tiziana Terranova Pluto Press 2004 p11 p3

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If this technology really prefigures such a seismic change it does not seem

unreasonable to intuit that the ramifications for the way we conduct many social

functions shall be immense and that educational models are of course going to be part

of this change, yet it is managing change for the better, and by that I mean for a more

sustainable, equitable and creative society, that I allude to in the title, must be the

challenge for the human actors within this network, be it local, national or even global

scale, and, of course, the students that will feature within this piece of writing have

ties that are global, being students in a school in the inner city from all over the world.

As a prelude to this dissertation I would like to say that, as I teach my classes, most of

which are conducted through the medium of ICT I give pause to reflect that:

A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction.9

It is no great stretch to the imagination to argue that we are already

cyborgs in our interaction and reliance upon computing and indeed

many other aspects of our lives in the twenty-first century. The

impact that this has on social reality is far reaching and has

immeasurable consequences for both those who seek to govern (the

conduct of conduct as defined by Foucault) and those who are the

governed under this regime in the interrelation of power dynamics.

9 Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention Of Nature Routledge Donna Harraway 1991 p150

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For some, the wildest fear is the overwhelming of our humanity by

this network:

Yet, rather than simply acquiescing in a view of the post human as

an apocalyptic erasure of human subjectivity, the post-human,

Harraway argues, can be made to stand for a positive partnership

among nature, humans, and intelligent machines.

It is this positive partnership that this dissertation seeks to explore

and possibly shed light upon if it is successful in what it has trying to

achieve.

As a post-script I would like to state that; liberal democracy amongst other western

paradigms, is ever challenged by globalisation, climate change, religious

fundamentalism to name but a few forces that are impacting on the social order and, if

not the development of, certainly the uptake, of computing technology itself. To

recognise the interaction of these players or actors is to ‘split hairs’ in the name of

ever more sophisticated analysis of the complexity of the world in the twenty-first

century. The old certainties are changing, if not gone, which perhaps the current

economic crisis is symptomatic of, for example. The fact of the internet and the

rhizomatic structure of its network must have reaching consequences for the social

order and as this begins to bump up against existing hierarchical democratic

institutions and possible change them: Downing Street has a presence on Twitter for

example, although I hasten to add that when I tried to direct message Gordon Brown I

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received no reply, indeed a civil servant has written a thirty-thousand word edict on

the use of Twitter: old habits die hard. Yet is liberal democracy worth defending or

preserving? It is probably not critically adequate to assume that it simply must be.

As it stands it is the summation of one particular period of history in European

Development and simply to assume that the way this society functions is the way

things are and indeed should be is arrogant in the extreme. To me the temptation is

the wholesale revision of the way our institutions function, using this technology as a

vehicle; I could never be described as a conservative and, yet I can see quite easily

that persuading civil servants of the necessity or even desirability of such a change

might be problematic, so the question must be why are changes necessary? Change

for change’s sake is simply stupid. The answer is the challenges that our society, in

its interconnectedness with the rest of the world, are so vast that the intelligence that

we might harness using the machines we have more intelligently can only help us in

the face of the many difficulties ahead.

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Chapter 1

The Situation As It Is

at Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate School, Shadwell, London.

This is a large comprehensive school in the East End of London. It is

the first federated school in the country and comprises a girl’s

school, a boy’s school and a mixed sixth form. It has good ICT

provision and gets good results. Ofsted recently judged it to be

‘outstanding’10. What does the ICT and Media curriculum involve in

such a school seeing as these are the subjects that make the most

overt use of the technology I am considering? What does it aim for

in terms of its students? The benchmark, as stipulated by

government is that a student leaving the school, to go to another

institution, or into its own sixth form, with five GCSEs above a grade

C is deemed to denote ‘success’. Bishop Challoner School is well

above the national average in this respect.

I work at this school as a Media teacher. Presently I am most

involved in delivering the vocational curriculum at key stage four.

The exam board OCR provides this. It is a six unit course within

which the students must work to complete various tasks which will

demonstrate competencies and understanding of various aspects of

the media. The pass rate is relatively high: one hundred percent of

10 Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate School OFSTED report 2009 p 1

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the girls passed this year and seventy-five percent of the boys. The

boys and the girls are educated separately in the lower school, they

are then together in the sixth form. Although the course I teach is

not, in fact, a GCSE but a vocational equivalent, it is counted as a

GCSE for statistical purposes. When I teach I work in a classroom

where each student is at a computer terminal. Each computer has

internet access and a bank of software including Microsoft Office,

various Adobe packages including Photoshop and Illustrator. The

classroom has an interactive white board and a teacher terminal

with RM tutor which may be used to monitor the students’ work,

there is facility to liaise about their work with the students using a

kind of messaging service on the computer, but there is also the

means to block the student if they are ‘off task’ for example on web

sites that are evidently not relevant to their work. The internet at

present is generally used as a research tool, not always terribly

judiciously. The head teacher has spent a great deal of time, effort

and money, to transform the educational provision for the students

of this school, not least through a forty million pound building

programme which has completely over hauled the facilities that

were in place. I am in complete admiration of what she has done

but wonder to what extent the educational provision is fitting the

students for the much vaunted knowledge economy and indeed the

challenges facing society that I have briefly outlined in the

introduction due to various draw backs perhaps inherent in the style

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of education offered and my speculation hereof is partly what has

prompted this dissertation.

The focus on ICT is positive in terms of the demands of the labour market and for the

most part takes the form of competence in certain software packages. The young

people are being equipped to take their place as workers, where they will have to use

this technology. The jobs that young people would have done on leaving school in

this area would have revolved around the economy of the once thriving London

Docks. Yet many of the software packages the students study will be defunct at some

point in the future, so really they are being inducted into a world where ICT in general

will be ubiquitous, certainly at Key Stage Four where it is obligatory to take ICT.

I have observed that some of the students have pages on the internet where they make

use of the social web, some also have i phones and are more engaged by this

technology than the taught material, maybe this is simply a function of the fact that

they use this technology in their leisure time so it does not represent the strictures or

tedium of the taught curriculum.

I went recently to ‘Education Education Education’, organized by

‘The London Business Forum’, a master class given by Richard

Gerver who used to run Grange Primary School. He has a

passionate belief in child centric learning that focuses experience

and context11. He told an anecdote of a young person who could not

11 http://www.ic-ed.org/index.html Leading Into The Unknown (2009) (Online) (Accessed 4th August 2009)

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sell him the sandwich that he wanted simply at an airport because

the individual could not think beyond the procedures that the had

been trained to follow. Clearly this is a shame, for both the provider

of the service who has not delivered customer satisfaction, and the

customer who has not obtained what he or she wanted. It is

tempting to think of this as symptomatic of a larger malaise that

besets our education system. Children and teachers are getting

better and better at passing exams and meeting governmentally set

standards, yet are these students better educated in the sense that

they will be equipped to live within the society they will find

themselves within when they have to face the reality of the labour

market, or will they simply be clutching meaningless pieces of

paper?

An individual such as the one mentioned above cannot not think

imaginatively how to find a solution to a problem in the course of his

or her working routine with out deviating from the access processes

he or she has been taught. How might education enable this

individual to be able to think more creatively and so be able to

function more efficiently and successfully in society going forward?

Schools evidently have a place to play in meeting this challenge but

so do other institutions involved in the provision of educational

services: for example cultural institutions that I allude to in the title.

The challenge for policy makers is to design the framework whereby

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all of these institutions might function in tandem to deliver the

services that the public need to equip them to be able to function in

society going forward. For example, at present, there are numerous

initiatives that aim to foster cultural and creative learning.

It has been documented recently in Unleashing Aspiration12 that

social inequalities remain as stubbornly entrenched as ever, so to

some extent, all of this effort to improve educational provision has

seemingly been to no avail in terms of fashioning the more

‘equitable society’ of the title in terms of things as they stand.

Some of the recommendations of the report are sensible tie directly

into the remit of this dissertation:

4.6 Harnessing technology to inform and inspire young peopleTechnology has an important role to play in inspiring and informing young people about a career in the professions.

Recommendation 11: The Government should work with a professional groupto establish a ‘youth technology and innovation challenge’ award as a means ofidentifying and showcasing creative ways to inspire young people.13

The report states that:

How we make a professional career genuinely open to as wide a poolof talent as possible goes to the heart of what a modern Britain should look like14

12 Unleashing Aspiration The Panel On Fair Access To The Professions Alan Milburn 200913 ibid p2814 ibid p9

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This is a credible aim and the functionality of social networking tools and associated

digital technologies can only be a part of this.

As things now stand, the potential the World Wide Web has, as Tim Berners Lee, its

inventor puts it:

…a group of people of whatever size could easily express themselves, quickly acquire and convey knowledge, overcome misunderstandings and reduce duplication of knowledge. This would give people in a group a new power to build something together.15

So the World Wide Web heralds the potential for collaboration on a scale and with an

ease that has never before existed due to the instantaneous nature of its connections.

Potentially this could render the hierarchical nature of our society obsolete or at least

threaten current structures, it would usher in a new transparency in terms of the way

many, for example, governmental functions, are performed: educational provision

must to some extent be a part of this. It certainly has implications for social mobility

and fair access to the profession as a marker of a more equitable society. This

transformation needs however to be managed to ensure that social cohesion is ensured

and vulnerable and marginal communities are not left behind by the rapid changes and

all can benefit from the increased wealth of knowledge creation. Several

organisations and initiatives now exist to ensure this is the case such a UK Online

Centres, Becta’s home access programme and ‘my guide’ which is available on the

internet.

15 Weaving the Web Weaving The Web The Past, Present and Future of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee with Mark Fischetti Orion Business Books 1999 p174

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The rapidity of this technological innovation is only partially reflected in the way I

teach at present and the way the Media curriculum that I deliver is structured. There

are some opportunities for team working at present, that Tim Berners-Lee sees as such

a potential of the web, built into the syllabus; for example, in Media, students are

asked to make a magazine together using desk top publishing software, but the spirit

of collaboration is not built into the way that, for example, the work the students

produce is assessed. In fact the manner of assessment is detrimental to the attempt to

foster group working as students generally readily perceive that a member of their

group is not pulling his or her work and, fearful of their grade, are reluctant to ‘carry’

the member that is working less hard than the others. It is enabling this co-operation

that must be one of the main challenges for the teacher and indeed the educational

system, creating the conditions where this spirit of collaboration and co-operation can

flourish to harness this potential of this technology, yet the assessment methods are

not fully geared towards supporting this important skill.

In one respect the push to use computers and their rapidly developing capabilities

more dynamically in education seems something that teachers might be skeptical of or

avoid as it is yet more direction of their pedagogy by bureaucrats and indeed, maybe it

is for some teachers, particularly ones near the end of their careers. The computer and

the World Wide Web, as it stands is a tool for carrying out the administration of the

school and something that the students may work on solitarily to complete course

work assignments. Media Studies sometimes manages to be an exception to this: for

example when students work successfully in teams to make a music video, but again

they are assessed as individuals, not as a team.

Developments in mobile telephony mean that these devices are often now enabled to

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communicate with desk top computers, and today students generally own such a

device. Often times the possession of such a device is seen to be a problem by

teaching staff as students can be distracted by this tool. What might a classroom be

like where the students’ relationship with this device is built into the lesson and

capitalised on? Might this not be a productive use and potentially unleash all manner

of fruitful connections that the judicious teacher could capitalise upon? Many

providers of educational software seem to think so and yet the imposition of such a

strategy upon disinterested teachers could do more harm that good. However there is

a movement to explore ‘hand held learning’ that I wish to investigate further.

When I work in class, I have observed that the most successful lessons have involved

students for example taking photographs with their mobile phones and blue toothing

them to a computer. There is a buzz in the classroom, partly I think as students are

given the legitimacy to play creatively with the phone which they all generally have,

and not be scolded for their natural interest in it.

Students seem to have an instinctive understanding of the technology (though there

will often be one individual who struggles to command a mobile phone, perhaps they

are from a particularly impoverished family). Most if not all students in my classes,

who are not, it has to be said, from the higher socio-economic groups, have a mobile

telephone and are only too happy to interact with it.

There will always be students cannot see the point of what they are doing at school in

terms of the tasks they are asked to complete and the learning objectives they are

presented with. Dewey wrote about these problems at length. At present these

difficult students are a huge problem for the system, they may become NEET (not in

education, employment or training) a problem for various parts of government,

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claiming social security for example or embarking on prison career. There is a

recognition of these problems, for example the attempt to redesign 14-19 curriculum,

and ambitions to personalise learning in various ways. The student’s mobile device,

which is so much part of their day-to-day life, could be part of this

Maybe a fundamental part of this problem is, as articulated by Andy Gibson who

founded ‘the School of Everything’, a web 2.0 platform that aims to unite teachers

with learners, when I interviewed him about this project and his attitude to the World

Wide Web in Education:

Schools are often about making people behave in a way that we’d like them to behave, they are in effect social training. If we were honest about what we were asking of people, they’d be totally voluntary.

We are forcing certain students to be in school at present and obliging them to learn,

or at least go through the motions of learning. How fantastic if they were actually

learning, learning what they would like to learn or things that were meaningful to

their lives. Of course you might say how can students know what they would like to

learn or need to know, that they are children, they don’t know what is good for them!

But we are disempowering them in the school, because we are feeding them chunks of

information that often they cannot contextualise.

Ivan Illich wrote in ’Deschooling Society’ about the social price of the school system:

Together we have come to realize that for most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school.16

16 Deschooling Society Ivan Illich Caller and Boyar 1971 p2

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This ability to think independently and for the subject to be an autonomous being

confident and capable in their own agency is paramount to the endurance of Western

democracy and used to justify the pervious lack of universality of the franchise, yet

many commentators argue that our education system is failing many, not least by the

standard of measurement, if it is ‘five good GCSEs’, then a significant percentage do

no make this grade. Illich’s views are perhaps utopian and the ‘School Of

Everything’ something that could co-exist with the mainstream school system, but the

problems he discusses are certainly pertinent to consider if we wish to ensure the

efficient and constructive functioning of the state school system.

Therefore the situation as it stands is that students are getting an education, which

historically stems from Prussian model, which came into being over a hundred years

ago when society was quite different to what it is at present. This approach is not

constructed necessarily to foster a creative and innovative population who can make

the kind of connections that society needs today to go forward and thrive.

Technological change continue apace and inventive solutions to the challenges I have

outlined need to be found. Yet many students have mobile phones and a significant

relationship with web 2.0 technologies as elaborated by researchers such as dana

boyd17 and it is these curiosities and ability to makes connections starting from

contextual engagement with such technologies but not necessarily actually ending

with them, that we need to be fostering. These interests and relationships need to be

capitalised on and I have begun to research this for example carrying out quantitative

and qualitative research with my students into their use of social networking and

17 Taken Out Of Context American Teen Sociality In Networked Publics dana boydUniversity of Califonia Berkley 2008

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associated technologies whish I intend to utilise when I begin to think more

thoroughly about what hand-held learning solutions might look like.

Chapter 2

The situation as it might be including some pros and cons

It is a job for the whole of government.And a modern form of government. One that empowers not controls. And one that puts at the top of its agenda a national drive to make Britain a fair, open and mobile society.18

What might a classroom be like where the students’ relationship with the mobile

phone is built into the lesson and capitalised on? Where the student’s interest in social

media is capitalised upon and used to improve their engagement with their studies not

only through the school but by other institutions with a remit to educate? Where the

computer is used creatively to run the school in a transparent fashion so its

machinations are comprehensible to a digitally literate community using social

networking tools? What if institutions such as schools and cultural institutions had at

their heart a drive to empower students for positive change?

It has to be a matter of adding or integrating these ideas within the existing education

system; a delicate process of reinvigorating education so it produces a more

18 Unleashing Aspiration The Panel On Fair Access To The Professions Alan Milburn 2009 p9

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sustainable, equitable and creative society in that such tools make can make it more

possible to reflect the world ‘as it could be’: democratic choices as opposed to social

engineering. Therefore it needs policy makers with a ‘light touch’, for example the

33101828013310182801recent move to give schools more autonomy in the white paper:

Your child, your schools, our future: building a 21st century education system19 is

very welcome. For example, Richard Gerver’s ideas concerning contextual learning

are pertinent here; he is very adamantly against Summerhill, a well-known

progressive school. Under his rubric children are able to have ownership of, or at

least a significant stake in the system yet within clearly defined parameters, which is

conducive to improving results and student engagement, Other exemplars that I found

when undertaking my research were the Surrey Centre for Excellence in Professional

Training and Education. I feel their publicity material puts it very well:

How can we help and encourage students to be creative and enterprising?

How do we help students in finding out things so that they can achieve what they want to achieve?

How can existing, new and future technologies help make learning interesting and more relevant?

Several pedagogical models exist already, for learning using this computer

technology: for one that of ‘blended learning’, mixing up remote computer based

learning with instruction from a teacher. This is not without its down side. Students

can be critical of it, particularly if they have been used to a more authoritative mode

of instruction. However, teacher training which enables systems and processed for

dealing with such issues could address this.

3310182801

19 Your child, your schools, our future: building a 21st century education system 2009

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The government will set the agenda for learning within the state controlled school and

has to manage the interface between the public realm of the school or cultural

institution and the private space of home and family. To make these changes we need

to embed digital pedagogies such as blended learning for one, but more research on

some of the possible approaches I have outlined. So many of these tools are in

classrooms already but are not being used effectively by teachers. This is not wholly

their fault, they need training about how to use this equipment (for example the

electronic whiteboard to name but one technology that is now pretty ubiquitous in

state school classrooms) it can be used interactively, there is equipment available that

may facilitate students engagement with the teacher in an interactive collaborative

manner, it does not have to be mere ‘electronic chalk and talk’ and many teachers are

already using this technology imaginatively.

Greater engagement with digital pedagogies would be the first step to an education

system where teachers could capitalise on students’ relationship with their mobile

device and interest in social media and encourage to be more creative and enterprising

to address some of the problems mentioned in the introduction. In terms of working

creatively and collaboratively some kind of team assessment element needs to be built

in I believe. Encouragement to use mobile phones as a learning device could also be

cross-curricular. I intend to use the school as a research lab to gain greater

understanding of the dynamic of social networking and its potential as a creative tool

as well as the potential of hand held leaning and will refer to researchers such as dana

boyd during the course of this undertaking. Furthermore the school maybe made

more digitally transparent through using a platform like Twitter for example, and this

could increase community engagement and cohesion.

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It became clear to me talking that we need to leverage this technology to strengthen

our communities and the communication that goes on within them and the school can

be a key player in this in partnership with other institutions. We need a level of

digital literacy in society that is maybe something of a pipe dream at present, however

the downside of so-called ipod liberalism is certainly something to be aware of:

While many assume that technology is a catalyst for change, it might also be an opiate for the masses. Governments can engage in meaningless exercises that allow their citizens to believe they have a voice when the exercise itself is meaningless or it gives a government a scapegoat – the public – if the policy fails.

For technology to really be an agent for change, he said we need to stop thinking about computers per capita and start thinking about empowering NGOs and other members of society. 20

However the school is a key institution that could play a meaningful role in

empowering citizens, certainly in this country where we have a long history of the

democratic process. Hard to reach and disadvantaged communities will continue to

exist but we must take steps that will break these barriers down and social networking

and associated digital technologies can be a key part of this.

I set out to see how I could apply these ideas to Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate

School. In the first instance I have arranged a meeting with the Head of Community

Education at the school. I am going to apply for funding to build on the work I have

started in setting up a social network: ‘Bishop Students Go Sustainable’21 which is a

social network designed to facilitate communication within the eco-committee which

has been set up so the students can work on Bishop Challoner becoming a more

20 http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/jul/22/digital-media-press-freedom TEDGlobal: iPods won’t end dictatorship (2009) (Online) (Accessed 4th August 2009)21 http://www.sustainabilityandrecycling.ning.com Bishop Students Go Sustainable (2009) (Online) (Accessed 4th August 2009)

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sustainable school. The idea is to do outreach work with parents over digital literacy,

possibly to get them into school to try to gain computer skills, in particular use of

social networking, specifically in terms of the work that the school is doing in terms

of sustainability, and the project will involved input from the aforementioned eco-

committee. This will mean setting up an informal method of communicating with

parents, or other adults in the local community, via a social networking platform, and

will involve them more in the life of the school, specifically over sustainability issues.

I will deliver a paper to the Royal Geographic Society on ‘innovative methodological

approaches to pro-environmental behaviour’ exploring the work I have done setting

up this social networking site and the plans I have going forward.

To elaborate briefly: the technology (Ning) is easily available and currently free of

charge at the most basic level although this could change. UK Online Centres is

supportive of this project, has given information about various government initiatives

and funding aimed to increase computer literacy and digital participation.

The practical application of the Ning site means that members of Bishop Students Go

Sustainable can share practice and ideas instantaneously across a large school site of

one thousand plus students. As the site is now so large, teaching staff tend to be

atomised and may not see other staff, often being isolated in the class room with

students, a problem of public education in general. The internet and social media can

be a lifeline affording communication between pupils and staff and parents

Barriers to implementation include the use of certain filter systems that may mean that

certain platforms may not be accessible via the school intranet.

24

It is worth noting Jerry Stein’s Learning Dreams programme22 which goes out to

parents and asks them ‘What do you dream of learning’ and facilitates them to do that.

It does not matter if a person wants to learn to drive a car, make a cake or understand

quantum physics. The programme is there to help the individual reach their dream

and overcome the alienation that many people feel in terms of the school institution.

The worker goes to the person at their home: it is not about people coming to the

school as many people have none to fond memories of school, they may have been

bullied, humiliated by teachers and so on. This kind of outreach work into the

community is entirely compatible with efforts to improve digital literacy through

social networking platforms, and may in fact be the first stage for those individuals

that won’t come to the school to take part in a learning initiative. Ultimately all these

strategies would work in tandem including provision by cultural institutions who are

making educational provision involving schools.

Young people need space to engage with technology: social networking and

associated digital technologies be it mobile telephony or something that no one has

even thought of yet. They need to understand it, to play with it and master it, but to

able to walk away from it too. It is not enough just to give them proficiencies in

certain software packages and to ban their mobile phones from the classroom. They

33101828013310182801need to learn to understand what kind of tool their mobile phone

it, how to master is, how to use it to navigate their life. They need to understand the

social networking sites; pitfalls such as privacy and cyber bullying. We need to

22 http://www.learningdreams.org Creating A Culture Of Learning (2009) (Online) (Accessed 4th August 2009)3310182801

25

provide them with an education that equips them to use it imaginatively. They need

to know how design the software that might go on it, how it can enhance rather than

rule their lives, so that the human life can go on and flourish, rather than the human

who exists merely to serve the capitalist needs of the network provider, the handset

builder and so on. I find invariable that students love the Macs and their creative

aesthetic. When we do a photography project, it doesn’t have to be about photography

that is ‘professional’ but maybe using the snap shot, thus forming the narrative of

one’s own life, being able to articulate one’s own journey through the tumultuous

waters of social change. The idea of e portfolio is I think interesting; it doesn’t have

to be the ominous database owned by software providers in the States, who we

(largely) unthinkingly give our data and the records of our lives.

The (mainly young and often naïve) users do not realise or care, that they are under constant observation.23

The e-portfolio doesn’t have to be something dry and official and lifeless, but a visual

diary, such as projects we have devised and carried out, people we have met, things

that have gone well (or even not so well) for us. We can use it to help ourselves

develop and go forward; surely this is a technology of the self in the best sense of the

phrase.

We do need to learn mathematics, how to read and write and this surely will carry on

being assessed probably by a traditional exam board, but why do all students have to

be assessed at the same time? This computer technology, this machine can maybe do

the drudgery of the administration. Students will carry on studying the humanities,

the arts and music for example, but this can be done as collaboration, not in isolation

23 Zero Comments Blogging And Critical Internet Culture Geert Loovink Routledge 2008 p7

26

to grade and stratify the individual. Employers seek accreditation and that will not

change, but the technology offers the facility to collaborate and this is what I think

that the exam boards must begin to recognise and reward.

As I mentioned at the start of this dissertation ‘education must conform to the facts of

human life’24. We are now in the position with the technology to enable our education

system to be able to do this. We need teachers and examiners able to respond to the

work students are doing online day in day out week in week out, this is in line with

thinking on assessment for learning and giving students feedback. Schools may

remain, but within collaborative ‘learning villages’ as Bishop Challoner Catholic

Collegiate School styles itself, students need to be taught how to work with each

other, how to collaborate, how to learn how to learn and this is perhaps best done by

peer modelling, for example teachers will be undergoing research projects themselves

so they model appropriate behaviour to students.

Knowledge arises in part from experience then. We can, to some extent, know the world through our interaction with the computer, we can use our rituals where this technology is concerned to acquire ‘apperceptive habits’.25

It is these apperceptive habits that the teacher needs to foster in the student.

We have reached a hypothesis that ‘learning to learn’ is a synonym for the acquisition of that class of abstract habits of thought which this paper is concerned; that the states of mind which we call ‘free will’ instrumental thinking, dominance passivity, etc, are acquired by a process which we may equate with ‘learning to learn’.26

24 The Absorbent Mind Maria Montessori The Theosophical Publishing House 1964 p11 25 Gregory Bateson Steps To An Ecology Of Mind Granada Publishing Limited 1973 p14326 ibid p140

27

This progressive change in the rate of proto-learning, we will talk ‘deutero-learning’.27

3310182833101828

Deutero learning is something that certainly social networking tools and associated

digital technologies may be used to foster. What kind of contextual learning might

this be? How would this work in a classroom? I spoke to the founder of The ‘School

of Everything’ to explore how these new technologies are already being used to

facilitate educational provision. This is a web 2.0 platform, a non-hierarchical way of

putting teachers in touch with learners. A possible model of education for the future?

Andy Gibson the school’s founder explained this to me:

The School of Everything platform could be used for collecting anything that helps

you learn a subject. Such as a really good yoga teacher, if you really wanted one. It

could contain everything you had collected clustered around that subject. The role of

a supervisor becomes really important at this point.

I asked him: who would train the supervisor? He explained that this would be the

thing that academic institutions should be very good at.

In effect he is trying to build a piece of software that does what a director of studies

does.

One of the main issues is being very clear on learning what you want to learn. So

learning how to learn is of paramount importance here. This it seems to me is what

schools have got to put at the centre of what they do.

27 ibid p14133101828

28

To be in the less hierarchical society where there is more free flow of information

should mean the strengthening of democracy and a more sustainable, equitable and

creative society where people are better informed and able to make better choices in

terms of their well being. And yet:

Real life is and must be full of all kinds of social constraint-the very process from which ‘society’ arises.28

There has been much work over the past decade to make the school what it now is,

such as the monitoring and quality control of teachers, the inspection regime that the

government has put in place and so on. The people who run these places are the

people that can put in place systems, the challenge is to design as system that can

capitalise on systemic changes.

Is this symptomatic of a greater sea change in society? As Andy said:

I basically turn off a lot of this stream of information. The way I consume

information is by sitting in cafes talking to people. I don’t bother trying to read

everything. It is much more personal. There is a real tendency now for people to

need information guides.

So perhaps the teacher needs to be a guide to the information to the web, showing the

student how to search and sift the information in terms of what they need to learn.

28Weaving The Web The Past, Present and Future of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee with Mark Fischetti Orion Business Books 1999 p186

29

The intelligent use of these technologies may therefore lead to a more sustainable

equitable and creative model through educational and cultural institutions. There is

the aspect of hand held leaning, social media as a tool for collaboration and also as a

tool to run the school. Cultural institution specifically through their remit to educate

may work in tandem with schools in a more flexible fashion that at present to offer

educational opportunities to young people. Of course other institutions may get

involved for example in the case of Applied Learning and the communication

channels that I am suggesting: micro Blogging, social networking can be used to

facilitate communication with these agencies also.

I am now going to conclude and make recommendations.

30

Conclusion

For “education” implies for Vygotsky not only the improvement of the individual’s potential, but the historical expression and growth of the human culture from which man springs.29

ICT can either create the new class divide or can reduce barriers. Our policies have to ensure the latter30

So what is the extent to which social networking tools and associated digital

technologies assist in the transformation of current consumer society to a more

sustainable, equitable and creative model in particular through educational and

cultural institutions?

These tools can be used to develop educational provision (as opposed to reinventing

it). There are many disadvantages to the current model of educational provision that

have been written about exhaustively, but the challenge, I think, is to improve the

existing system using digital technologies which will potentially transform

pedagogies into something much more flexible and dynamic which can meet the

challenges of society in the twenty first century. Education no longer has to be so

regimented or inflexible as it has been historically in the face of the widely differing

needs of learners.

However, as UK Online Centres see it:

29 The Collected Works Of L S Vygotsky Volume 1 Problems of General PsychologyEds Robert W Rieber Aaron S Carton Plenum Press 1987 p130http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/corporate/content/view/103/158/lang,en/ Connecting the UK, the Digital Strategy, April 2009 (2009) (Online) (Accessed 4th August 2009)

31

Digital Britain’s biggest challenge – winning ‘hearts and minds’ - In the wake of Digital Britain, it’s clear one of the core challenges ahead lies not in the creation of infrastructures or content, but in winning over hearts and minds.31

People who wish to be instrumental in this change have to formulate policy that is

intelligent enough and flexible enough to ensure that both schools and cultural

institutions can take advantage of the opportunities bought about by rapid

technological change, yet wise enough to see through the undoubted hype, to

implement the systems that will stimulate the sort of society which will be

sustainable, equitable and creative.

Digital inclusion the heart of Digital Britain, and Martha Lane Fox its new Champion - Today’s Digital Britain report puts people up the digital to-do list, and makes digital inclusion, digital take-up and digital skills central to government plans for the UK of the future.32

Social networking tools in particular can be used to improve communication within a

large school site such as Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate School, both between

staff and pupils, colleagues and between students involved in student-led initiatives

such as school council, eco-committee and so on.

Social networking and associated digital technologies may also be used within lessons

to deliver the curriculum as they facilitate dialogue between teacher and pupil and

may be instrumental in enabling team work and collaboration which is essential in

terms of building a more sustainable, equitable and creative society.

In terms of cultural institutions, I was not able to explore the implications for these

institutions this fully in this piece of writing; adding them to the title was possibly

31 http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/corporate/content/view/103/158/lang,en/ Latest News (2009) (Online) (Accessed august 2009)32 ibid

32

over ambitious, but again, these technologies can be used to facilitate links with these

places and the people who work within them and make communication more

instantaneous, this may be used to deliver policy aims around creativity and culture

which would tie in with the aims of this dissertation. I do not intend to make

recommendations for this area, but would rather leave it as an area, which I would

hope to explore in the future.

It is essential that assessment criteria and specifications begin to recognise the

potentials that these technologies bring and work this into the qualifications they

offer. This needs to happen as a matter of urgency. In some respects it is underway

already in qualifications such as Media Studies but needs to be developed constantly

as the technology moves on. Again the machination of the exam boards is beyond the

scope of this piece of writing but these organisations also need to have a strategy that

takes advantages of the flexibility, collaboration and creativity that these technologies

can engender so they can work in tandem with teachers employing digital pedagogies.

Particularly interesting to me is the advent of hand held learning which is at the

leading edge of these technological developments, and the possibility that this has in

terms of reaching disaffected students because of student enthusiasm for mobile

devices. This is something that I will carry on researching when I have handed in this

dissertation and again I have barely touched upon within this piece of writing.

This will certainly be part of the technical infrastructure going forward.

We can support collaboration with a technical infrastructure that can support society’s needs in all their complexity.33

33 Weaving The Web The Past, Present and Future of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee with Mark Fischetti Orion Business Books 1999 p208

33

The Web has to be able to change slowly one step at a time, without being stopped

and redesigned from the ground up. This is true not only for the Web, but for Web

applications-the concepts, machines and social systems that are built on top of it.34

These observations are true for the Web as they also are for education. To stop and

redesign education from the ground up is unnecessary. Again, it is asking:

How can existing, new and future technologies help make learning interesting and more relevant?35

If as Andy Gibson of ‘The School of Everything’ see its, teachers may be a guide to

information, students would not necessarily be obligated to attend school every day.

However, this contrasted completely with the aim of the people who run the Bishop

Challoner Sixth form: students are now to be obliged to come to afternoon as well as

morning registration, to have directed study time in the library.

To me there is a gulf between the person who is allowed to self-direct their studies

and what authority thinks is good for that person. This is due to the extent to which

schools act as agents of socialisation. The extent to which they need to do this reflect

the problems of our society, the fragmented nature of communities, students’ diverse

backgrounds. The school has a place and a duty to model appropriate use of the

potential of the internet rather than the anti social uses it can be put to and the values

of the dominant culture, which may be changing but which policy and strategy can

articulate. In the face of the challenges our society is facing because of the economic

34 ibid p20635 Students As Partners Surrey Centre For Excellence In Professional Training And Education University Of Surrey Leaflet

34

crisis for example it is ever more important that we formulate a more sustainable,

equitable and creative model and we can use educational and cultural institutions to

do this.

For people to share knowledge the Web must be a universal space across which all hypertext links can travel. I spend a good deal of my time defending this core property in one-way or another.36

It is formulating the policies to make sure that people know how to identify the

knowledge that they may be able to harvest on the internet as well as the best ways to

share that knowledge. The school is a fantastic vehicle to model best practice to both

the new generation of internet users and the wider community, which may not be

digitally literate.

36 Weaving The Web The Past, Present and Future of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee with Mark Fischetti Orion Business Books 1999 p176

35

Recommendations

So, in effect, the result of this dissertation is my recommendation of the uptake of a

social media strategy for the school. I have talked with Helen Milner the Managing

Director of UK Online Centres about the best way to implement this and what the

tangible benefit might be:

This would involve:

The opening up of branded social media channels for the school: such as the Bishop

Challoner Catholic Collegiate School Twitter feed. This is s non hierarchical medium

for communication- social media can be used to engage students, this ties in very well

with current ideas about student voice for example. I have already begun to develop

this area through my work with the eco-committee on the Ning site ‘Bishop Students

Go Sustainable’.

Twitter is very useful in terms of building a community, those who tweet currently

comprise of a community of around six million. For example specifically around

parent/student engagement this technology could be used effectively. However it is

important to understand some of the key features of the technology:

facebook, which I note is filtered by the school, for example, is always reciprocal or

closed.

36

Where as Twitter’s default position is public although the user has the facility to

create privacy settings accordingly.

Twitter could be used for the school bulletin, it is an easy way to publish bite-sized

information and links.

The school could employ an ‘official Tweeter’ and likewise could have ‘an official

twitter news channel’.

The head boy or potentially, the head girl could Twitter to the student body to help

build a responsible student community through Tweets that would reflect positive

things that are going on within the school.

In terms of such information that the school is happy to make public we could link to

documents such as the outstanding Ofsted report. Social media is good at

broadcasting in this way. We could set up a channel for up to date news. This could

tie in with the school’s sustainability policy just to give an example.

The governor’s minutes could be published, in fact anything that the school is happy

to share in terms of its public image.

People can then comment and indeed question decisions. The school would have to

have a member of staff to deal with this flow of comment and information.

37

To grow such a project, I suggest a one-year social media project after which the

project can become more main stream if it is successful.

Twitter is a broadcast medium for news but it is a two-way stream. I will explain the

basics of how it works: elements such as hash tags, followers and so on.

In terms of social media and teaching and learning I believe that it can raise

attainment and will begin to try and incorporate this within schemes of work and my

performance management for 2009-2010 in terms of my classroom teaching.

The social media strategy must fit into priorities of school in terms of what it really

wants to achieve this year and we need to think carefully of how can social media

help us achieve this.

The Home Access Programme is rolling out in January so it would be worth

formulating plans around this.

Home Access

On Tuesday 23 September 2008 the Prime Minister announced top line details of the Home Access programme which will provide computers and connectivity to families so that children are able to enhance their learning at home.

The vision for home access, as set out by Jim Knight, Minister of State for Schools and Learners, is “to ensure that all pupils aged 5-19 in state maintained education in England have the opportunity to have access to computers and internet connectivity for education...at home”. This programme builds upon the work of Jim Knight and his Home Access Taskforce, which consisted of representatives from across government and the public sector, the private sector, and the third sector. Becta has played a key role researching for and advising on the project and has been instrumental in

38

implementing the initiative since the pilot launched in Suffolk and Oldham in February 2009.37

We could fit the social media strategy to a group of parents who have a computer

because of this government programme and therefore deliver social media objectives

to parents.

In term one of the year we would focus on building the project up.

In term two we would have home access computer classes: see

http://www.myguide.gov.uk38 which is designed for people who are brand new to

internet and contains a basic curriculum.

In effect these technologies can assist in building up the right kind of community for

school and with a careful approach, we can use these technologies intelligently to

enhance the school’s reputation and image as well as possibly increasing attainment

and student engagement in the longer term.

37 http://www.becta.org.uk/homeaccess Home Access (2009) (Online) (Accessed 4th August 2009) 38 http://www.myguide.gov.uk My Guide (2009) (Online) (Accessed 4th August 2009)

39

Last word

I hope that I have communicated in this piece of writing some of the vast potential of

social networking tools and associated digital technologies to assist in the

transformation of current consumer society to a more sustainable, equitable and

creative model in particular through educational and cultural institutions. The

implementation of a social media strategy for the school would be the first step on this

journey. In terms of cultural institutions, I have not really managed to satisfactorily

answer this save to say that there is much scope for educational institutions to work in

tandem with these organisations and that social media and digital technologies could

be used in the future to build these relationship. The course of research of this piece

of writing threw up many fascinating connections and insights, not least the potential

of hand held learning, the need to develop and explore digital pedagogies and the

recognition that examination boards need to be involved in formulating the kind of

assessment that will reward creative team work, not only in Media Studies and ICT

but right through the subjects. The World Wide Web is one of the ‘facts of human

life’39 that education must conform to as I stated at the beginning of this piece of

writing and its potential can be used to give people an autonomy and a voice in the

best sense of democracy, being instrumental in the self realisation of human potential

rather than a breeding ground for the dangers inherent in social control and

manipulation of populations. Social networking and associated digital technologies

will certainly require as an intelligent interpretation of their potential to make a more

sustainable, equitable and creative society, as was the accumulation of knowledge that

engendered their existence but the possibilities of them doing so are immense.

39 The Absorbent Mind Maria Montessori The Theosophical Publishing House 1964 p11

40

41

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